


Round and Round It Goes

by novaKnight_Rahxbi



Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Alternate Universe - Avatar & Benders Setting, Bending (Avatar), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-23
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:40:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,951
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24343657
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novaKnight_Rahxbi/pseuds/novaKnight_Rahxbi
Summary: It’s common knowledge that the Avatar must master all four elements. No one ever seems to talk about the learning curve involved.—Noctis trains and trains and trains.
Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia & Prompto Argentum & Noctis Lucis Caelum & Ignis Scientia
Comments: 4
Kudos: 36





	Round and Round It Goes

**Author's Note:**

> Much to my absolute joy in these trying times, “Avatar the Last Airbender” got put on Netflix a little while ago and that kickstarted my inspiration to write this little AU drabble! That show does wonders, I tell ya...

_“Hey Dad?”_

_“Yes?”_

_“How come you’re not the Avatar?”_

_Puzzled, Regis looked down at his young son. “Whatever brought this up?”_

_Noctis shyly lowered his head, letting go of his father’s hand as he stopped walking alongside him. “I dunno. You’re way bigger and stronger than I am, so I don’t get why it has to be me instead of you.”_

_“It’s… complicated, Noctis. But what I can tell you is this.” Regis put a comforting hand on his son’s back. “The world can be a dark and scary place at times, and it needs someone like the Avatar to light the way. That someone is you.”_

_The child looked back up at Regis with an unabashed youthful hope in his eyes. “You really think I can do that?”_

_Regis smiled solemnly at him. “I_ know _you can do it, my son_.”

* * *

Noctis gritted his teeth, forcing another intake of air through his nose and into his lungs as he focused on the stream of orange flame flowing out from his fist. As he exhaled, the stream wavered and flickered in the morning light, much to the dismay of the one directing him.

“Hold it steady,” Ignis directed, looking back and forth intently at the conjured flame and the surface it was currently attempting to heat up. “The key is to focus on your breathing.”

“Easy… for you to say. I’ve been holding this thing for like five minutes now.”

“And at your level, you should be holding it for double that time with no trouble whatsoever.”

“Maybe if I wasn’t doing this so damn early in the morning—“ Noctis started, the flame quickly doubling in size as he let out a yawn.

“ _Focus,_ Noct,” Ignis warned.

The young prince huffed, tightening his fist to narrow the fiery stream back to its original size. As he tried to focus on something else aside from how he was missing out on precious, _precious_ sleep, he noticed that the bottom of the cast iron pot was just now starting to glow a dull red. 

Ignis took a few pinches of some unknown spice and sprinkled it into the pot. “Just a bit more…”

Feeling himself getting closer to the brink of getting extinguished, Noctis punched a blast of fire with his other fist towards the pot before falling backwards onto the cool stone surface of the haven. Grunting as he slowly sat himself back up, he wiped the sweat beading on his brow away to see Ignis stirring the contents of the pot, taking a sample of it into a small saucer.

Ignis sipped the broth, thoughtfully smacking his lips together before setting the ladle back down and firing a blast of blue fire from his own hand. The flames licked the metal as a more noticeable bubbling and steam started emanating from the top. “Close, but not quite the temperature I had in mind.”

Noctis folded his arms in irritation. “Then do it yourself next time.”

“And deny you a valuable learning opportunity? I’d be remiss if I did.”

“I’ve already got fire streams covered. Why can’t we move on to the more advanced stuff?”

“Because what you lack is the proper control,” Ignis answered. “The power is certainly there, but firebending isn’t solely about force. You need to have precision and intent behind it as well. Blasting everything with fire haphazardly isn’t always the answer.”

Noctis got back onto his feet, dusting himself off with a small puff of air. “And preheating stew is supposed to help me with that?”

“Keep the flames too low and it will never get done in time.” The flames below suddenly shrunk in size as Ignis waved his hand to the side. “Keep them too high and you risk completely evaporating it. It’s not exactly the most dangerous scenario you’ll come across, but it’s a valuable lesson in its own right.”

Noctis rolled his eyes. Given the current circumstances, he’d take whatever sort of Avatar training he could get. The role wasn’t a walk in the park to begin with, but being on the lam from the Empire put him under a little more pressure to get things done in time, so it definitely wasn’t any easier. But there was something else about the way he’d struggled to keep the fire going earlier. He’d normally chalk up to being a bit rusty, but something else felt off. His drive, that inner fire in the pit of his stomach didn’t quite feel right lately. It was all over the place, flickering in and out like a candle in the wind.

Noctis walked over to the boiling pot, taking some of the stew out with a wooden spoon and bringing it to his mouth. “Then when I eventually get surrounded by a hoard of beef stew Flans, I’ll remember who to thank.” Bearing the fruits of his labor was short-lived, however, as he spat out the liquid and started fanning at his mouth to ease his singed tongue.

Ignis made zero effort to hide his wry smile. “Provided that you don’t end up biting off more than you can chew.”

* * *

_Whack!_

“Wrong.”

_Thwack!_

“Not even close.”

The second rock whizzed by his ear as he narrowly jerked to the left, only for another (definitely bigger) rock to hit him square in the jaw.

Gladio sighed, shaking his head disapprovingly. “Are you even trying?”

“You know what? No, I’m not,” Noctis sniped back, ripping the blindfold away from his eyes and rubbing his sore jaw. “I just came here to learn how to take a boulder to the face on purpose.”

“Don’t blame me because you can’t get out of airbender mode,” Gladio chided. “Switching gears from one style to the next should be second nature for the Avatar.”

“I know that,” Noctis insisted.

“Seeing as you’ve been dodging everything I’ve thrown at you, I find that hard to believe.”

“I could hit them back no problem if I saw where they were coming from.”

Gladio kicked his heel into the ground, raising up a short stack of rock to lean against. “I know you can. That’s why I’m having you do this instead.”

Relenting to the fact that he wouldn’t be walking out of this anytime soon, Noctis reluctantly tied the cloth back around his eyes and resumed his loosened horse stance. If he was being honest with himself, earthbending hadn’t really been his forte and still wasn’t to this day. Having to constantly focus on stances and be rooted to the ground to do it just felt so… restricting. Didn’t really help that Gladio could be such a hardass with training most of the time.

“You’re still wanting to evade as your first instinct. It’s an airbender thing, I get it. But you’ve gotta start facing things head on.” Gladio assumed a similar stance, muscular arms reeled back behind him. “And that includes the things you _can’t_ see coming. Stomping into the ground to raise up two more stone pillars, Gladio punched the top halves off of them and sent them flying towards Noctis.

Noctis took a deep breath, broadening his point of concentration to surround him. It was faint, but even the slightest change in the air’s vibrations clued him in. One from the left, the other from the right. Quickly pivoting to the side, he felt the two earthen chunks sail narrowly past him.

“You’re not getting away from this one!”

The intense rumble of the ground below him made every one of Noctis’ muscle fibers scream at him to _move, get out of the way_ now. He resisted the feeling, pulling the fibers taut to his core and readying his hands in defense.

 _Don’t move,_ he told himself. _It’s right in front of me. All I’ve got to do is—_

Thrusting his fists outward, Noctis felt a pushback against his knuckles that immediately disappeared as he heard chunks of rock fall and hit the ground all around him. Not hearing anything else coming at him as he took a deep breath, he undid the blindfold and blinked a few times to readjust his vision. Surrounding him he saw slabs of sheer rock laying at his feet, definitely once part of something much much larger. Smiling at the sight of what he’d successfully prevented from flattening him into a pancake, Noctis looked back at Gladio, who was nodding in approval.

“Look at that, princess. You finally decided to get your hands dirty.”

Noctis dusted bits of dirt and crumbled rock off of his knuckles. “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were trying to send me to an early grave.”

Gladio smirked, raising up a few more smaller stone barriers. “What, am I gonna have to dig that for you too?”

“Yeah yeah.” Noctis resumed his stance and swung his arm up, forcing the rocks to levitate around him. “Keep talking and I’ll end up digging yours first.”

* * *

“You’re telling me that you wouldn’t just waterbend the fish instead of fishing for hours on end?” Prompto asked.  
  
Noctis looked back at Prompto in disdain as if he’d just insulted his mother. “Hell no. That’d take all the fun out of it.”

The stream of water levitating in midair elongated and flowed at Noctis’ command, mirroring the push and pull of his motions as it moved above the lake’s surface. The cool nighttime air felt like a comforting blanket to Noctis as he practiced, the bending of his arms and hands feeling more like a much needed stretch than a training exercise.

Prompto leaned back on his arms, eyes still following the motion of the water as it moved through the air. “It’d make it even more fun, what are you talking about? Instead of waiting for the fish all day you could just _make them_ come to _you_.”

Noctis hummed in response, not trying to hide the tinge of irritation as he continued to bend. All the bending styles had their pros and cons and he technically wasn’t supposed to show any bias towards one in particular, but water had always been his favorite (well, a close second to air, of course). It just came so easily to him, especially with the moon out full-stop like this. 

“Man, you make it look so easy.”

The water gently fell back into the lake as Noctis turned to him, a mildly confused look in his eyes.

“Getting to bend all the elements like that,” Prompto clarified. “Must be pret-ty cool.”

“It’s more like a blessing and a curse,” Noctis grumbled.

“You’re joking, right? How is it a curse?”

Noctis puts his hands on his hips, his shoulders sinking in exhaustion as he looked out at the lake’s horizon. “... It’s complicated.”

“If you say so.” A faintly contemplative look appeared on Prompto’s face before a more eager and hopeful one took its place. “Think you could do that wave thing you did the other day?”

“I could, but it’ll cost ya.” Noctis lazily stretched his hands behind his head. “Avatar party tricks don’t come cheap, you know.”

“Didn’t cost me when you flooded half the school with toilet water because you—HEY!” Prompto’s protests got more frantic as he suddenly found himself being swept up into the water by a sizable wave that seemed to come out of nowhere.

“What’d you say? Didn’t quite catch that!” Noctis yelled over.

Prompto floundered about in the lake before spitting out the water that he had gotten a mouthful of. “You’re the worst, you know that?”

Noctis laughed as he used the tides to pull his friend back to the shore. ‘The worst’ was such a strong term to use. Now a ‘work-in-progress’? That suited him much better.

**Author's Note:**

> noctis: hey specs i have a question  
> ignis: i am not going to ignite a pile of weed so that you can transfer the fumes into yourself without doing the work  
> noctis: ...i don't have a question


End file.
